How to journal an option roll

Roll a position in the app

1. Open All Trades

   Go to All Trades and find the active option trade you want to adjust. Only open option trades offer a roll; a closed trade has nothing left to roll.

2. Choose Roll Position

   Right-click the trade and pick Roll Position. If you already have the trade open, the Roll Position button at the top of the trade view opens the same dialog.

3. Enter the closing date

   Under Close current position, set the day you closed the old position. It can’t be later than the entry date of the new position.

4. Enter the closing premium

   Type what you paid or received to close, as one total for all legs and contracts, the same way you enter premiums on any trade. You don’t pick Pay or Get here: the direction is set by your position, so a position opened for a credit pays to close and one opened for a debit receives.

5. Check the closing order fee

   The order fee starts with the fee of the original entry. Change it to what your broker actually charged for the closing order.

6. Set the new dates

   Under Open new position, pick the entry date and the new expiration date. Every leg moves to this one expiration, and it can’t be before the new entry date.

7. Adjust the strikes

   Under Strike adjustments, each leg shows its old strike next to a field for the new one. Change the legs you are moving. If you keep the expiration, at least one strike has to change, otherwise there is nothing to roll.

8. Enter premium, quantity and fee

   Type the premium of the new position as a total, check the quantity (it starts at the original number of contracts and you can change it), then set the order fee and the stock price at the time of the roll.

9. Review the summary and roll

   The Roll summary shows the signed closing premium, the signed new premium, the quantity and the result as Net credit or Net debit. If it matches your broker, click Roll Position.

Why a roll is two trades and one campaign

At your broker a roll is often a single combo order, but it does two things: it ends the old position at a price and starts a new one with its own expiration, strikes and premium. Each half has its own result. If you only edit the expiration of the old trade, the cost of buying it back disappears, and your win rate and P&L stop matching your account.

MindTrajour keeps the two halves apart and together at the same time. The original trade gets its exit order and is closed, so its realized result counts in your statistics. The new trade is a normal open trade. Both go into a bundle, so the campaign still reads as one story from the first entry to the last exit.

What stays the same and what changes

A roll continues the same position, so the dialog only lets you change what a roll can change.

• Kept from the original: underlying, strategy, currency, trading account, and the option type and side (buy or sell) of every leg.
• Set on the new trade: strikes, one expiration for all legs, quantity, premium, order fees and the stock price.
• Copied: the tags of the original trade.
• Not copied: notes, emotions and checklist answers. The new trade starts with an empty journal, so you record why you rolled, not why you opened.

Both trades go into a bundle named after the ticker and the strategy with “Roll” at the end, for example “XYZ Short Put Roll”. If the original trade already belongs to a bundle, say from an earlier roll, the new trade joins that bundle instead. If closing the original fails, the new trade and a newly created bundle are removed again, so a failed roll leaves nothing half done. An expiry reminder for the old position is cleared, since that position no longer exists.

Credit roll or debit roll: reading the signs

Premiums in MindTrajour are signed totals: money you receive is positive, money you pay is negative. In the roll dialog you type both premiums without a sign, and the app signs them from the original entry:

• The new premium keeps the sign of the original entry. A position opened for a credit is reopened for a credit.
• The closing premium takes the opposite sign. Buying back a credit position is a payment; selling a debit position brings money in.
• Net = closing premium + new premium. A positive result shows as Net credit, a negative one as Net debit.
• Premiums are totals for the whole position, never per contract, so the net is not multiplied by the quantity again.

A credit roll is the usual case when you sell premium: you buy back a short put that moved against you and sell a later one for more than the buyback cost. A debit roll costs money, for example when you move a long call to a later expiration to buy time. Neither label says whether the roll was a good decision. It only says which way the cash moved.

How the bundle shows the campaign P&L

In All Trades the bundle row adds up its members. Realized P&L is the sum of the net P&L of the closed trades in the bundle, fees included. An option trade that is still open adds nothing to the realized figure until you close it. Only open stock positions in a bundle, for example shares from an assignment, show an unrealized amount.

That is why a bundle can show a loss right after a credit roll: the buyback is realized on the original trade, while the credit of the new trade only counts once that trade is closed. The worked example below shows exactly this, and how the campaign turns positive when the new position is closed.

Rolls imported from Interactive Brokers

If you import from Interactive Brokers by CSV or FlexQuery, a roll arrives the same way: as a closing trade and a new opening trade. You don’t need the roll dialog for those. When a position is closed and reopened on the same day with the same leg shape (the same option types, sides and quantities per leg), the import preview suggests the chain as one bundle, however many times you rolled.

Untick a suggestion you don’t want. Accepted suggestions become regular bundles that you can rename, extend or dissolve later, exactly like the ones the roll dialog creates.

Habits that keep rolls readable

• Log the roll on the day you make it, while the reason is fresh, and write that reason into the notes of the new trade.
• Enter the fees your broker charged instead of keeping the default, so the realized P&L of the bundle matches your statement.
• Judge a defended position by the bundle, not by the single trades. The question is whether the whole campaign paid, not whether the last leg did.

Example

Worked example: a credit roll and a debit roll

Two hypothetical positions on the placeholder underlying XYZ, with the same order fee on every order. First a short put rolled for a credit and closed later, then a long position rolled for a debit.

Hypothetical numbers, not a recommendation.

See it in the app

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